by Jared Paul
Abby lifted her head and noticed that her co-worker, Reyna had taken the bench across from her. While they were both dressed in the same scrubs; a cute pink number with a floral print, Abby figured Reyna wore it better. The woman was beautiful, as far as her personal definition of the word extended, and since she’d known Reyna since high school, she’d seen the girl blossom from geek into chic in the short years since they’d graduated. Reyna was also one of the most selfless people she’d ever known.
Abby leaned the left side of her face into her hand and exhaled slowly. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me, Reyna. I woke up with enough energy to give an eating disorder to a sumo wrestler, but now, I feel like a slug. That, and my stomach is pretending to be an Olympic gymnast. And, I swear, the smell of this place is like I have my nose in Marne’s mop bucket. That cleaner she uses is driving me insane.” She paused, letting her head slide from her palm and on down to the table. The chill of the table felt wonderful. She continued, “The only thing I can understand is why I’m tired; Travis and I had an interesting night.”
“Oooh, you got lucky?”
Abby scoffed. “No, I got pancakes.” It was as far as she was going to go into the details of what had gone on the night before, and it was as far as she wanted it to go in her head. For all intents and purposes, the encounter with her father never happened.
“Well you got one answer. How about for the rest of it? Maybe those pancakes weren’t such a great idea.”
Abby shrugged her shoulders and it looked like a lumpy boulder had shivered. She replied, “I loved the pancakes. I hadn’t eaten them in forever, but you can’t beat Trudy’s homemade blueberry syrup.” She paused, thinking back to how her day had started, how she’d gotten up with the same kind of energy and left home from work feeling as if she were forced to walk in slow motion. She’d wanted to hit the convenience store to stock up on supplies for the monthly visit from her Auntie Flow, but then she’d met up with Travis and forgotten all about it
“Oh, God.”
Abby sat up, no longer interested in mapping the interior of her eyelids. It occurred to her, and she’d admonish herself for not thinking about it sooner, that she could be suffering from more than the pre-game show to her monthly.
“What is it? Are you going to be sick?”
Abby looked to Reyna’s eyes and met them with an expression of glossy hazel concern. She wasn’t about to tell her friend what was going through her head, since if she did, it would mean that it was a real possibility and it terrified her. She said, after what seemed an eternity of staring silence, “I need to go home early. You can cover me, can’t you?”
Reyna nodded slowly. “Sure, I got you today. You going to be okay?”
Abby swallowed. As she lifted herself from the table, she hoped to hell she was going to be okay. If she had screwed the pooch this badly, it wasn’t likely she was going to live much longer than it took to tell Travis how stupid she’d been or to tell her father that he might be a grandpa. Either one of them would have more than enough motive to kill her.
She replied, desperate to believe it herself, “I’m going to be just fine.”
CHAPTER 15
………………………………..
Abby decided that she was going to hit a convenience store that was located just outside of town so that she could avoid running into anyone that she knew. For one thing, she didn’t want to be distracted again, and for another anyone she knew who saw what she was buying might get the news back to her father and she’d rather get run over by a semi-truck than face that apocalyptic outcome. Buying a pregnancy test, especially if you weren’t married, wasn’t something you broadcasted to everyone, even if it was something to be excited about.
She walked through the store, trying to act casual, thinking that if she could believe she was in the place to by nothing more than a gallon of milk, then the few people that happened to be in the store would believe it too. There was so much running through her mind that she hardly noticed when she was at the checkout counter.
“I’m sorry, what did you say?”
The clerk behind the counter looked down at the small item she’d scanned and then to the green-lit price display and replied, “I said that you owe me five ninety five.”
“Oh,” was all Abby managed as she picked through her purse for a five dollar bill and a single. After she handed over the money and took her purchase from the counter, she was out of the store and back in her car before the checkout clerk could even offer to give her the nickel she was owed.
The hot warmth of her car in the sun felt good against her nerves, and in the silence of the vehicle, she had a moment where the dizziness seemed to pass and her thoughts came slower. What in the world was she going to do if she was pregnant?
Abby realized that, while Travis had tried to use every precaution available to them, there had been a time or two when passion overturned logic and they’d gone at it with the abandon that two lovers possessed by attraction were apt to do. Human nature dictated that mistakes were a part of life, and a life without the occasional mistake wasn’t a life at all.
She frowned as the word mistake floated around in her skull and bumped between her ears. Her father had told her once that her mother had considered her a mistake, which they hadn’t planned for her conception. It had caused a pain in her heart that not even her mother’s death could heal, and she vowed that if she was going to be a mother, that the life she’d be bringing into the world was not the kind of blunder she’d mark down as having made.
Abby placed the palm of her hand to the flat of her belly and closed her eyes. If she was going to have a baby, it was meant to be and that was all there was to it.
********
“You should tell me what the hell your problem is so I can help you remove whatever it is that you have stuck up your backside.”
Travis chuckled at Louis as they sat together parked on the shoulder of the main highway that led into Collie. He had to admit that sitting in silence for three hours would wear thin on anyone’s nerves, especially since whenever that silence happened to be broken, a snarky comment was slung with the intent similar to a hand grenade. He replied, “I’m just exploring a theory in my head. It’s like a puzzle I can’t put together because all of the pieces didn’t make it into the box. It‘s kind of making my ass itch.”
Louis eased himself further into the passenger’s side seat and stuck his knees against the dashboard as he pulled his uniform cap further down on his forehead.
He replied, “Catching speeders in a town that’s as busy as a polka concert parking lot is about as interesting as watching grass grow. Entertain me.”
Travis turned his eyes to his window with a smile painted on his face and watched the street, holding his laser scanner like a pricing device in a grocery store. He said, “I think Mayor Bradley is involved in some kind of trouble. Two people that worked for him died yesterday. My gut’s going ape shit trying to digest that it was all just happenstance and that the toad is squeaky clean.”
“Well you know that some of us Collie folk think Bradley shouldn’t have won that last election. We all thought Dean Connor was going to win since the vote was in his favor for most of the run.”
Travis felt his face scrunch as his brain tried to recall the election that had taken place just after Cory had healed up from the encounter she’d had with a bullet and a psychopath tag team duo. There had been a lot going on then, and politics wasn’t one of his favorite things to pay attention to. He could recall that there had been some commotion involving the vote count and who should have become the mayor of Collie, though the reason it hadn’t become a big thing was that Bradley had been mayor for the past five years and one more year added to his reign couldn’t make that much of a difference. He believed the only people who had really cared about the vote were the people backing Connor, though as he remembered, the conjecture died down almost immediately after it was a done deal for Bradley.
; Travis asked, “Why would anyone want to remain mayor of a small town?”
Louis shrugged as his eyes began to close. It was obvious that if he had his way, he was going to leave the speeders to Travis and exercise his ability to count sheep. He replied lazily, “The money isn’t that great, but there are businesses that are owned by the town of Collie and there’s a lot of contracts that come through from Hadley. The town council runs most of it, but whoever is mayor decides where that money goes and how much winds up in which pocket. That mansion Bradley owns wasn’t cheap, just as that car he drives wasn’t a gift from his momma. I bet Bradley wants to stay mayor because his broad poop chute is mighty comfortable from that throne he thinks he’s sitting on.”
Travis had to admit that while Louis hadn’t put it too eloquently, the idea that Bradley would do whatever he could to keep himself in office wasn’t that farfetched. Though, there wouldn’t be a way in hell that he’d be able to prove that two people who’d suffered heart attacks on the same day were murdered because of some fat baby trying to keep suckling on the preverbal teat.
He sighed, “This is ridiculous. It makes me wonder why I’m bothering to waste all my brain cells trying to make sense of it.”
Louis chuckled underneath his hat. “It’s the kind of man you are, brother. You see a problem, you want to fix it. You smell crap and you go looking for the steam. You got a hunch something dirty is going down, man, you know you gotta find out what it is.”
Louis said. “Besides, if you can get something nasty on that butter dish Bradley, then let me in on it. I’d pay to see him get knocked off his tall donkey.”
********
The motel wasn’t as posh as she was used to; in fact it was pretty close to being a hole in the wall dug out by giant rats. The place was located at the edge of town going in the opposite direction of her father’s estate, and as long as it had running water and a bed, she’d fork out the thirty dollars a night it would take to stay. However, and Abby shivered when she thought this, if the room she rented had just one cockroach in it, she was running for the woods.
It wasn’t the best idea in the world, and Abby assumed that bad ideas were just in the air for her, but she’d rather die than be caught peeing on a stick in her father’s house. There just wasn’t another place she thought was safe. As she stepped inside of her room for the first time and got a look at the green comforters and pale yellow curtains covered in cigarette burns from people who couldn’t read the non-smoking signs, she wished she’d had better options. Still, the sooner she got what she’d come here to do over with, the sooner she’d be able to get home and forget she’d need such a place as the ‘Budget Inn’ for shelter.
Abby had locked her car and brought in her purse, the test stuffed inside of the biggest pocket. She pulled the little box out and tossed her purse on the bed as she headed straight for the bathroom. At least, the room was clean and devoid of the horrors a shack like this could have in it, and once she wrangled the test from the box and gave a quick read over the instructions (which she would have found hilarious given a different circumstance) she made a wish and did the deed.
The three minutes it would take for the test to tell her what she wanted to know felt like the longest three minutes in her life. Abby tried counting the pale flowers that ran up the bathroom walls, though once she got to fifty, she gave up and let her thoughts take over. She realized that this was her punishment for not taking better consideration of her physical relationship with Travis, and for overlooking the consequences that came along with that lack of consideration. All her life, she’d been taught that the worst possible outcome of sex was pregnancy, that even an STD was better than making a baby. Her father would have a heart attack or worse when he found out that she’d even had to buy the test in the first place, and given his behavior of the night before, the heart attack would be the best reaction she could hope for.
If there was a moment, regardless of the situation or the reaction, that she’d want Travis to be with her, it would be now as she waited for that stupid test to develop. He should be here in this ratty place, holding her to his warm body as he told her that everything was going to be all right. It sucked that he didn’t even have the first clue of the stomach churning anxiety she was experiencing which had been flavored ever so delicately with body-numbing fear.
She loved Travis, she really did, and she wanted to reach out to him whenever she needed to. The fact that all she could reach for was empty space that made her heart squeeze in pain.
Abby forced herself to look down at her watch and to gauge how long she’d been wallowing. It had been over five minutes since she’d planted her test on the counter to dry. Inhaling, and because if she didn’t make herself do it she’d stop breathing all together, she commanded her hand to pick up the test and to place it in her line of sight.
As soon as her eyes focused, she laid her eyes on the symbol of her fate. The shape of a plus sign stared up at her, its meaning rock solid and irreversible.
CHAPTER 16
………………………………..
Travis stood outside of Marshal Bradley’s home, his mind going over how he’d decided to question the man. He didn’t have a shred of proof, not even as much as an inkling of evidence that could link the man with what he suspected him of doing. If he had evidence, he’d have gathered a posse and come calling on the mayor with more to him than a badge and a sidearm. As it was, he’d left his handcuffs back in the cab of his four door.
What he wanted, what he thought would get him off of the weird feeling in his gut that wouldn’t let his brain leave the whole matter alone, was to see how Bradley reacted when he implied he knew Bradley was guilty of something sinister. At least, and he had to keep telling himself this, if anything, he could sleep better at night knowing that he’d exhausted the possibility of two innocent people meeting their ends early. He was a man after all, and men did what they could to help those who could not help themselves and to adhere to the duties they were responsible for carrying out. His father would roll over in his grave if he didn’t have the stones to follow his gut, especially if there was even the remote chance he was right. A large part of his heart, the part consumed with Abigail’s happiness, hoped for just that. He wished like mad that he was wrong.
Travis wasn’t lucky enough to have the pleasure of waiting outside for Bradley to come down to his front door to humor him. No, as he’d made his way up the long gravel drive from the street, Bradley was already outside of his house, his thick arms wrapped around his midsection, his glazed eyes glittering with distaste. He could sense the impending explosion and still, he continued to walk. It was a rare occurrence when he changed his mind, and this wasn’t going to go the way Bradley wanted it to go.
“Hey, how are you doing, Mayor?”
Bradley’s frown creased his face like the spine of a worn book. “Save it, Deputy Harper. I don’t have the time to entertain you, I’m afraid. I think it would be a better idea for you to just leave. In fact, it would be the best idea of your life if you would just leave Collie altogether. Find another woman to please yourself with while you’re at it.”
Travis smirked as he came within a foot of Bradley and his pompous porch. He said, “This isn’t a social call, Mayor Bradley. I’m here to ask you a few questions, and either you can answer them here, or I can drag you down to the station house and have you sit in a chair for a few hours before I make you answer them.”
It was an empty threat, but Travis patted himself on the back knowing that Bradley had no way of knowing that fact. Probably.
“Please, enlighten me on whatever it is that has you so curious. I’d have you remember that I can make your life unpleasant enough to reconsider accusing me of some crime.”
“Did you know that two of your employees died yesterday?”
Mayor Bradley’s face ran a rainbow of emotions, flickering briefly but never deciding on what to stay decided on. Eventually, when the man answered, he settled on apath
y. “I did know, but their loss is to their family not to my income. Does the question have a point to it?”
I was wondering what you thought of the fact that they both died of heart attacks, though neither of them had medical conditions that would have caused it. Does that seem shady to you?”
Bradley’s eyes turned a color of milky blue that reminded Travis of spoiled milk. They seemed to be so thickly shadowed that nothing, not even hatred, would have been seen peering out from them. Bradley answered, his voice robotically flat, “Are you accusing me of murdering them?”
Travis lifted an eyebrow. “I didn’t say anything about you being a murderer, but now that you mention it, did you kill them?”
The laughter that issued from Marshal Bradley’s voice sent a warning chill down Travis’ spine. He wished he’d headed into this situation with a better thought out plan, especially when Bradley stopped laughing and answered icily, “What if I did? What would you do about it, you insignificant insect? There’s no evidence.” Bradley’s face shaded further as he added, “And if you keep poking your nose into things that don’t concern you, you’ll have more to worry about than getting your hopelessly thin questions answered.”
