The Weight of Blood

by Laura McHugh

  No one noticed us leaving together. Daniel’s truck was held together by rust and primer, and I was surprised it started after a few feeble coughs. Wind funneled through the cab, snarling my hair. We talked a little bit about school, how he’d been taking night classes at the technical college in Springfield but hoped to have enough money saved up to go full-time in the fall. He asked if I was looking forward to senior year, and I said I was looking forward to it being over.

  Birdie’s house was dark when we drove past, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t up, watching. Daniel parked in the yard with the engine running. “Thanks for the ride,” I said, making no move to exit the truck. We weren’t on a date, but I felt like if we sat there long enough, he might get the idea to lean over and kiss me. I was dying to know if the first time was a fluke, if I’d been wasting so much energy feeling anxious about him when the true ingredient to a full-body swoon was something as simple as liquor. I wasn’t opposed to making the first move myself, but so far, Daniel had given no indication that he wanted more than friendship. And I refused to throw myself at someone who wasn’t interested. I didn’t know how Bess could stand it, laying herself out for Gage time and again while he continually saw other girls.

  Daniel looked at the darkened house, the rotting gingerbread trim, and toyed with his key chain as though he might turn off the truck. “Can I walk you to the door, or will your dad come out with a shotgun?”

  “He would if he were home,” I said, returning his smile. We got out and spent another awkward minute staring at each other on the front porch, serenaded by a chorus of coyotes and whip-poor-wills in the hills behind the house.

  “Well, good night,” I said, finally acknowledging that he had no immediate plans to conduct the necessary research to determine whether a kiss would turn my legs to jelly. I stuck out my hand.

  He took it in his, not crushing it like he had at Dane’s, not letting it go. “I know it wasn’t easy, earlier, for you to tell me those things. About Cheri and all.” He examined my hand in his, contemplating the confluence of lines as though preparing to read my fortune. “I said I knew you from school, but we met before, at the river. Spin the bottle. I figured you didn’t remember or were too embarrassed to bring it up. But as I recall, it wasn’t half bad.” He grinned. “Actually, I think you kinda liked it.” He released his grip and stepped off the porch. “So, anyway, just wanted to get that out in the open.”

  His truck sputtered down the road as I watched from the living room window, tipsy from our prolonged handshake, which could almost legitimately be classified as handholding. Sure, he’d been teasing me, at least a little, but he remembered. I didn’t have many friends, didn’t confide in anyone except Bess, and had never had a boyfriend, but I’d let Daniel right in, based on no more than a gut feeling and the fact that he’d offered to help with Cheri. He hadn’t assumed, as most people did, that it was pointless, that the trail was cold. And as always, when I thought of Cheri, I thought of my mom; as I approached her age at the time of her disappearance, I realized how young she truly was. Cheri and Lila, two lost girls, bookends with a lifetime of mysteries between them. And then it occurred to me: If it was possible to find one, why not the other? It couldn’t hurt to ask around. Someone out there might know what happened to my mother. It might not be too late to find out.

  I was tired and beyond ready to take off the white dress, which I looked forward to tearing into dust rags. As I reached up to close the window shade, I saw a lone figure on the road, moving slowly, a bent silhouette. Birdie on her night patrol.

  Chapter 8

  Lila

  Crete was waiting for me at the garage a few days later when Carl dropped me off after work, and seeing him there made me nervous. He joked around with Carl like he always did, like everything was fine, but it wasn’t. Things had been tense between us since I brushed him off, and he’d barely spoken to me. No more friendly conversation. No more mention of installing AC. I figured he wasn’t used to getting turned down, that he was pissed or embarrassed, but sooner or later he’d get over it.

  “Hey,” he said when Carl’s truck pulled away. “It’s payday.” He handed me an envelope.

  “Thanks,” I said, opening it up. Instead of a check, there was cash. And not much. I knew room and board were being deducted from my pay, but how much could it possibly cost to put me up in the crap-hole garage? “Where’s the rest of it?”

  “I was thinking it might be best if I put the money straight into a savings account, so you don’t have to mess with it. I know you’re wanting to save it all anyhow, and you don’t have much in the way of expenses. That pocket money there should cover whatever you need.”

  “Thanks, but I’d rather handle it myself,” I said. “I could go into town and set up an account.”

  He sighed. “Sorry,” he said. “I think it’s best this way.”

  “Well, I don’t. It’s my money, and it’s not up to you what I do with it.”

  “Contract says otherwise,” he said. “Guess you didn’t read the fine print.”

  I was so angry I was shaking. I stood there mute and watched him get back in his truck. “Asshole!” The word tore out of my throat as he disappeared down the road. I knew he was trying to get back at me, to show me he was in control, but he was taking it too far. He couldn’t keep my money. The problem was, I didn’t know what to do about it. I paced around the garage, working it over in my head.

  Crete didn’t come around the next day. Ransome told me he’d gone to Arkansas on business, but he’d left a new work schedule. I would have Thursdays off. When she spread out the tarp at lunchtime and sat to one side to make room for me, I told her I needed to rest. I ate crackers and beef jerky alone in the garage. Ransome was staking tomato plants on the far side of the field when I came out, but she’d left a plastic cup of tea outside my door. I brushed ants from the rim and drank.

  I practically jumped on Carl when he came into the restaurant that night, and he couldn’t have looked happier to have my attention. I’d been worried he’d have to work on Thursday, and he did, but he assured me his hours could be rearranged. He’d have plenty of time to drive me to town, though he wouldn’t hear of dropping me off. He insisted that he’d take me to eat at the bakery and help with my errands. You’ll need somebody to show you where everything is, he said. I’d gone through the slender phone book and written down the address of the grocery store and the one attorney who had an ad in the yellow pages. They were on the same street, one block apart.

  He showed up at my door the next morning freshly scrubbed and reeking of Old Spice. “You look nice today,” he said, holding the door of the truck open for me. He was obviously delusional. I hadn’t bothered to fix myself up in the least. My hair was wet, my eyes shadowed from lack of sleep. “I shouldn’t say that,” he corrected, smiling. “You look nice every day.”

  His sweetness was almost unbearable after the crappy couple of days I’d had, and I couldn’t look at him. I stared down at my lap. I was wearing a yellow sundress I’d borrowed from Crystal and never given back.

  “Hey, are you doing okay?” he asked. From the corner of my eye, I saw his hand move toward me and then pull back. “Feeling homesick?”

  He always seemed to think homesickness was the worst problem you could have. I shook my head. I missed the memory of home, but home as I remembered it no longer existed. The most important pieces of my former life were dead and buried, and I couldn’t reclaim them by going back. “I’m fine,” I said. We drove down the blacktop, and I watched the lush greenery flow by.

  “I hope those guys at the restaurant aren’t getting you down,” he said.

  I didn’t want to talk about any of the things that were really bothering me, most notably his brother. So I nodded. “They’re jerks.”

  Carl cleared his throat. “The one with the beard? I … heard him say something the other night.”

  I didn’t
know which one he was talking about. I was pretty sure they all had some kind of facial hair and were equally offensive.

  “I’m fixing to have a talk with Joe Bill Sump,” he said gruffly. “I’m gonna clear things up a bit. Don’t you worry about him.”

  Joe Bill? That was probably the worst name I’d ever heard. I had to smile a little at the thought of Carl sticking up for me.

  We reached the city limits of Henbane, population 707. The welcome sign was peppered with holes, as if someone had blasted it with a shotgun. A two-story limestone courthouse dominated the tree-lined town square, and shops surrounded it on three sides. Henbane was the county seat, Carl explained, the biggest town in Ozark County. I imagined the entire population would fit on the courthouse lawn.

  The Donut Hole was no different from Dane’s in that everyone stared at me and the food was greasy. Carl insisted on paying, and I let him, since I didn’t have much cash. After breakfast, we crossed the square to the attorney’s office. I didn’t want to tell Carl I was seeing a lawyer because I was afraid he’d mention it to Crete, but there was no way to hide it from him. So I told him I had some legal questions about my parents’ estate.

  “I’ll go in with you,” he said. “I’ve known Ray Walker since I was a kid.”

  He said the same thing about everyone we saw. It seemed that, aside from me, not a single new person had entered his life, they all had always been there. “If you don’t mind,” I said, “I’d feel more comfortable alone. I don’t talk much … about my parents.”

  “Oh,” he said. “I’m sorry. Sure. I’ll wait right out here. Take your time.” He sat down on a bench outside the office. “Just holler if you need me.”

  I stepped inside the aggressively air-conditioned entryway and erupted in goose bumps. The secretary spoke briefly to Mr. Walker on the phone and then rose to open the door to his office. He looked momentarily stunned when he saw me—shocked to see an unfamiliar face, I assumed—and then quickly regained his composure.

  “Please come in,” he said. He was tall and angular, wearing a white dress shirt with rolled-up sleeves and a tie with the knot loosened. His graying hair was combed to the side with pomade, and his eyes were pale and piercing. He stared at me expectantly.

  “Hi,” I said. “I’m Lila Petrovich.”

  “I know who you are,” he said, reaching out to shake my hand. “I expect the whole town knows by now. I’m Ray Walker. Let’s have a seat, shall we?”

  I followed him around the billiard table that dominated the room. He sat behind a polished mahogany desk, and I sat across from him.

  “What brings you here?” he asked.

  While I tried to decide what to say, he poured two cups of coffee and slid one across the desk to me. “If I tell you something, do you have to keep it to yourself?” I asked. If he knew Carl, he probably knew Crete, and I didn’t want the conversation getting back to my employer.

  “Well,” he said, stirring sugar into his coffee, “I do abide by the attorney-client privilege, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  That didn’t ease my fears, but I didn’t have much of a choice. “I have some questions about a contract, and I wondered if you could look at it for me.”

  He laughed, and it turned into a cough that went on for a minute until he cleared his throat. “Would this be a contract with Crete Dane?”

  I nodded.

  “Then I imagine your contract is pretty well binding.”

  The room suddenly felt too small. “Did you write it?”

  “Lord, no.” He chuckled. “He retains what you might call a more prestigious firm in Springfield. Lucky for you, I suppose. No conflict of interest.”

  “So you could help me.”

  “Possibly. I would need a retainer, and I would need to see a copy of the contract.”

  I didn’t have either of those things. “How much is the retainer?”

  He wrote a number on a notepad and showed it to me. I fidgeted in my seat. “Do you have a payment plan?”

  He stared at me as though trying to gauge something with no standard of measurement. He took a swallow from his mug and sighed. “Do you have any money at all?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I mean, not very much. That’s partly why I’m here. If you could just give me some advice—”

  He held out a hand to stop me. “I am a country lawyer, madam. I have accepted chickens in settlement of a debt, and I am certain we can work something out. But I must insist on a small percentage of cash up front. Bonnie can explain the terms on your way out, and you can come back and see me when you have the means to move forward.”

  “Thank you,” I said, standing to leave.

  “Aren’t you worried he’ll find out you’ve been here?”

  His words froze me. “Should I be?”

  “I won’t say anything, of course,” he said. “Neither will Bonnie; her job depends on it. But other people may have seen you come in. And people talk. Now, I’m on his bad side already, but if I were you, I’d think long and hard about which side of Crete Dane you want to be on.”

  “It’s too late, I think,” I said.

  Mr. Walker swirled his coffee cup. “I figured,” he said.

  I knew exactly what I wanted from the grocery store. My grandma’s dumplings were the ultimate comfort food, cheap and easy, requiring few ingredients. Carl pushed the cart and helped me find what I needed. He greeted everyone he saw with a friendly hello, not bothered by the fact that most of them openly stared at us. As we neared the cash register, an Amazonian blonde grabbed his wrist and screeched like an annoying bird. They started talking, and she ignored me completely after an initial dark glare in my direction. I drifted toward the magazine rack and caught sight of a man in an apron shaking a little boy by the collar. I moved closer and saw that the man was holding a candy bar. The boy looked up, terrified, and I smiled at him. I’d been caught stealing candy years before at a Kmart in Cedar Falls, but the manager had mercy and let me go.

  “Please,” I said, stepping forward and digging in my pocket. “I’ll pay for it.” I offered a handful of change, and the grocer stared up at me, slack-jawed, slowly rising to full height. “Here,” I said, smiling to encourage him. He glanced down at my palm long enough to pluck the proper coins. He loosened his grip on the boy, who snatched the candy bar and ran.

  “How’s it going, Junior?” Carl asked, coming up beside me with the cart. “Looks like you just met Lila. She’s new in town.”

  “So I see.” Junior snapped out of his trance and squeezed behind the register to ring me up.

  “Sorry about that woman back there,” Carl said to me. “She’s an old friend from school, and she has a way of cornering you.”

  “It’s okay,” I said. Had he thought I’d be jealous? Was I jealous? Junior bagged up my groceries and took my money. I didn’t have much left over.

  “Do you have any pans I could borrow?” I asked Carl on the way back to the truck. He’d insisted on carrying my two small bags.

  “Sure I do,” he said. “You can come on over and use whatever you need.”

  “I don’t want to intrude,” I said. “There’s a stove burner at my place, I just need something to cook in.”

  “Come on. It’d be a favor to me,” he said. “I’d love to taste whatever it is you’re making. I haven’t had home cooking in a good long while.”

  It didn’t take much for him to convince me. I was in no hurry to get back to the garage, and I wanted to see where he lived. I noted the decline of roads as civilization receded behind us. The two-lane highway out of town had been cut through stone, cliffs rising on either side as we passed through naked layers of earth. Once we hit blacktop, the road—or its makers—had been humbled. Instead of blasting through the landscape to make its own way, it followed the rolling ridge, traveling along its spine, the world falling away from its flanks. Then we tu
rned onto dirt and drove and drove through woods edged with barbed wire. The trees gave way to pasture on the left, and we passed a small frame house with a close-cropped yard and irises blooming beside the steps. A tiny old lady in overalls stood out front with a watering can, watching us pass. Her dog barked but didn’t move from her side. Carl waved, and the woman nodded. “That’s Birdie,” he said. “The midwife.”

  A few minutes later, we pulled up to his house, plain except for the decorative trim along the porch. A forgotten garden filled the side yard, a few random blooms showing through the weeds. “This is it,” he said, grabbing the grocery bags. “Come on in.”

  I’d expected a spare bachelor’s kitchen but instead found it well stocked, the pots and pans and utensils worn to a dark patina. When Carl excused himself to tidy up the other rooms—he hadn’t been expecting company, he said—I sneaked glances at the framed cross-stitch sampler on the wall, the patterned dishes in the china cabinet. An unmistakable photo of Carl and Crete as boys, the older boy’s arm locked protectively around his much smaller brother’s shoulder. Beside the kitchen door, pen marks broke their height into increments, the highest one well above my head. They had grown up here.

  “What can I help you with?” Carl asked when he returned.

  I didn’t want any help. Dumplings were the one thing I remembered how to make from Grandma’s recipes, and I’d made them in every foster home that had allowed me to cook. I wanted to mix and measure and sink my hands into the dough and let the ritual kneading and shaping return me to my mom’s kitchen. “You can keep me company,” I said, “as long as you don’t get in the way.”

  He leaned against the counter and chatted while I worked. When the dumplings were ready, we ate them at the dining room table, Carl complimenting my cooking repeatedly and finishing off the portion I’d planned to save for lunch the next day. After dinner, we moved to the porch swing with sweating glasses of iced tea.