by Rachel Caine
I move forward, because I don't know if she could feel me shiver, and I pick up stuff from the floor and stack it in the corner just to have something to do. Clothes, mostly. There's my favorite black tee, and it smells like old sweat, but I put it aside anyway to take back with me.
I can hardly smell the rotten-food stench in here at all, and when I shut the door and open the window a little, it's fine. I sit down cross-legged on the bed. Dahlia flops down next to me and hugs my pillow. I miss my pillow. Javier's aren't soft enough. Maybe I'll take that with me, too.
"Hey, that's mine," I tell her, and she tosses the pillow at me with an expressive eye roll. I catch it before it hits my face. It still smells like detergent, which reminds me of Mom, and how she did the laundry twice a week, and I helped fold stuff. Sheets and towels, every week. Routines. Safety.
Why did she have to be such a liar?
I avoid the pain. Change the subject. "So, what are you doing today?"
"Heading up to the Rock."
Oh. Right. The Rock is a big, jutting boulder that rests about halfway up the hill; it's heavily graffitied, and a gathering place for local kids who want to smoke and drink and generally do stuff their parents wouldn't like. I don't go very often, but I know where it is. Everybody knows.
"Oh. So that's where you're hanging out now?" She hunches her shoulders forward, which sort of counts as a shrug that can't be bothered. "You're going to get busted if you keep that up." I hesitate, then continue. "Were you meeting somebody?"
She grins suddenly, and I wish I hadn't asked. I think. "Nobody special. I was just seeing who was up there, and if they had anything good to share. Sometimes Mary Utrecht has her mom's Valium."
"Oh, so now you're into pills? I leave, and you go all dark side?" I throw the pillow, and she catches it in midair.
"Relax, it's casual. It's not like I go to pill parties or anything." She sends me a quick glance. "Hey, how did you get here, anyway? I didn't see your mom's ride on the road."
"Yeah, well, I walked," I tell her, then immediately wish I hadn't said that; if she tells anyone, they'll know I'm living somewhere in walking distance of this house. I wish we were somewhere else. I love my room, but everything in it reminds me of Mom, of how she's always been here, ready to give me a hug when I needed one, or fix a problem, or protect me with her life. Having Dahlia here helps, but it doesn't stop the truth from coming through.
I'm not angry at Mom anymore, I realize. I'm sad. I'm disappointed. I'm confused.
"You okay?" Dahlia asks me quietly.
"I don't know." I swallow, and it hurts, and my eyes burn. "I--my mom and I had a fight. I said some things. I was pretty cruel."
She leans over to look down at me. "I yell at my mom all the time."
"No, it's--I think I really hurt her. And maybe she deserved it, I don't know anymore. But . . ." I can't help it. I start to cry, and I roll on my side and hate that I'm crying and that Dahlia can see me doing it, but it feels good when she touches my shoulder and ruffles my hair and rubs her hand in slow circles on my back.
"You're a good person, Lanny Proctor," she whispers in my ear. "You'll get it right. Okay?"
"Okay." I gulp back tears. I'm weeping for a lot of things: Mom lying to us; me cutting her to pieces with words; this ruined house that used to be such a sanctuary. I'm even crying because I've lost Dahlia, but I haven't lost her at all. Stupid. I feel stupid.
Dahlia knows how to snap me out of it.
The pillow hits my nose, and I claw it off and yell, "Hey!"
"No more sad face. Time to get happy, girlfriend!"
I'm half-angry with her, and half-giddy. I taste tears and laughter at the same time. I grab the pillow and smack her with it, and we wrestle for it, and then I'm on top of her, and we're looking at each other, and she's laughing like a dropped silver bell and I think . . . I think . . .
I don't think.
I just kiss her.
It's like everything explodes into quiet around me, and all I can feel is her, her lips (so much softer than the boys I've kissed, smaller, sweeter), her body arching up against mine, our breasts pressing together under the layers and layers of cloth, and God, this feels like the best moment of my life. Like until this moment I've been doing it all wrong, and finally I've figured out something so important it makes everything fall into place inside me. It's wonderful, and it's terrifying, too. I'm shaking with the shock of what I've done, and I pull back, wondering if Dahlia's going to scream at me and call me names now.
She doesn't scream. She doesn't cry or yell. She's smiling like she's just waking up from the most wonderful dream, and she's looking at me that way--the way that Javier looks at Kezia, the way Sam has sometimes looked at my mom, and my breath catches because I was right, it's beautiful. It feels beautiful.
"Well, hello, I've been wondering when you'd finally get around to that," Dahlia says, which makes me laugh in panic and wonder. Her lazy, lovely smile fades. "I've been crying myself to sleep since you left. Did you know that?"
"No. Why?" I mean it honestly, because this is all coming at me fast, and I can't quite get hold of it.
"Because I love you, fool." She grabs the pillow and whacks me with again, which makes my hair fly in my face, and I start to laugh, and she kisses me again.
It's still stupid. I know it's stupid. And dangerous. But it doesn't feel wrong.
I don't feel wrong anymore.
16
GWEN
Everything's wrong. I feel like I've been cut open and emptied of everything that matters, and I can't even say that it hurts, because what I feel is . . . nothing. No anger, no fear, no rage, no love, nothing but echoing silence from my head and my heart.
Not a person, but a shell of one. Maybe I've always been a shell, because if those videos are real, then I've never been who I thought I was.
Sam's driving. He says, after a long, rough silence, "Where do you want me to drop you?" It's clear he doesn't even want to say that much, from the abrupt tone of it. I swallow hard and shut my eyes.
"So that's it," I say. "We're finished now."
"We've been finished since Atlanta," he says. "Did you honestly think anything else?"
God, it hurts, but at the same time I can't deny that he's right. Clearly, he ought to get the fuck away from me; he can't tell who I am anymore, or even what I am. For all Sam knows I could be some secret accomplice of Melvin's, or working against him, or some weird, psychotic combination of the two. "I understand," I say. I mean that.
I'm off balance. The loss of my kids has taken my world away. I don't care where he leaves me--by the side of this country road, or in the middle of a city. He could shoot me and dump me in the ocean, and I don't think I'd care. I feel dead inside. I want my kids, and my kids don't want me, and how do you live after that?
Sam says nothing to me for a long time. We let the miles hiss away beneath the tires as we take the turnoff away from Norton and back toward the freeway. The numbness doesn't go away, but something else begins to grow. It's a wild sense of recklessness. Purpose. If I can't protect my kids one way, I will protect them another.
Absalom has made me into the worst kind of enemy: one with nothing to lose, and nothing left to fear. The only hold Melvin had on me was my kids, and if their safety is out of my hands, then there's no longer any reason for me to be careful.
Or invisible.
I ask Sam, "How far to the next town?"
"Half an hour to one big enough to matter," he says. "Why?"
"Drop me off," I say. "He'll find me."
"What are you talking about?"
"Melvin will find me. I'll make sure he does." I can imagine how it would go: a moment of inattention, and suddenly he's there. He's on me, beating me down or shocking me senseless. I'll wake up the way his victims do: helpless, suspended, terrified, in agony. And the pain won't stop until I die from it. "I just need to make sure you find him and kill him. I don't care what he does to me. I can get him out in the open for
you."
"You don't mean that."
"I do. He'll keep me alive as long as he can, so you should have time. Even if it's too late to save me, he'll keep my body with him, after; he won't run until he's satisfied. I'd be the last, Sam, even if you can't get to me before it's done. You can stop him. I can make him take his time, make it last until you find him. He cannot get to my kids. That's all that matters to me now."
He suddenly pulls the truck over to the side of the road in a rattle of gravel, and the chassis rocks as a fast-moving eighteen-wheeler blasts past, then another. He puts the gearshift in park and turns in his seat to face me. I can't tell what he's thinking, until he says, "Goddammit, Gwen. If you're telling the truth about that video--" He closes his eyes for a second, and then I recognize the expression, finally. It's a frozen, distant look of someone who's staring into the face of something awful. I wonder if I have it, too. "You need to be there for your kids if you didn't do those things. You know that."
I'm doing nothing but thinking about the kids. Thinking about Lanny staring into my face and rejecting me once and for all. My children deserve my last, best effort to preserve them, even if it takes me away from them forever. I can't prove that I'm innocent. But I can save them, whether they believe in me or not.
"This is the right way," I tell him. "It's the only way."
"I can't let you do it."
"You can't stop me."
He shakes his head and says, "Your best bet is to go back to Rivard. Rivard gets to Absalom. Absalom leads to Melvin. You don't have to do it this way."
"That takes too long."
"You can't put yourself out there like some . . . sacrificial goat."
"Why not?" I turn toward him, and I see him flinch from what he sees there. "If I'm already dead to the people I love, I might as well die for them."
It's bleak, and it makes perfect sense to me. I think that for the first time Sam Cade really pities me now, as if I'm broken. But I'm not. I'm forged hard out of pieces, like a bar of solid steel. There's nothing soft left.
I'm too broken to be broken anymore.
"If you want to leave me here, then do it," I tell him. "I'll go it alone. But I'm going after Melvin Royal. It's all he's left me in the world to care about."
He swallows. I don't know the last time I've seen Sam unsure, but here it is, right now. I have a thousand-miles-away view of the desire I felt for him before, the hopeless wish that we could cross the minefield between us and let the past go, just for a while.
But the past never leaves us. It's in every breath, every cell, every second. I know that now.
"God, Gwen," Sam whispers. "Don't do this. Please don't."
I unbuckle my seat belt, open the door, and step out into the cold, misty air. Rain's on the way, the kind of wintry stuff that turns to ice in the blink of an eye. Black ice, the kind you can't see coming. The kind that spins your life out of control and into disaster.
I start to walk in the direction that traffic is headed, along the side. It's a dangerous spot to be on foot; there isn't much shoulder between the gravel and the road surface, and on the right, the land drops in a steep curve. Nothing beyond but the sharp points of trees.
Everything hurts. There is nothing safe, nothing good, nothing kind anymore. If I fall, it won't hurt me. If Melvin cuts me, I won't bleed. I'm not here. I'm not here.
When Sam puts his arms around me from behind, I fight. I struggle. From the passing cars and trucks, it must look like he's attacking me, but no one stops. No one cares.
Everything hurts.
I scream. It goes up and into the misty air and is swallowed up like it never existed, and everything crashes in and down, and I am crushed under the weight of a grief so large that it's the earth itself.
I have a wild desire to run into the constant traffic, and I should. I should just end it in a blare of horns and lights and squealing brakes and blood, but that doesn't save my kids.
"Easy," Sam is saying, his lips close to my ear. He's holding me too tight for me to break free. "Easy, Gwen. Breathe."
I'm breathing, but it's too fast. I feel light-headed. Sick. The world is gray and nothing matters, but his body is warm and solid and holding me here, to life. To pain.
I hate him for it.
And then the hate melts, and what's underneath is something raw and hurt and desperately grateful. My panting slows. I stop fighting him.
The tears start slowly, just a trickle, and then a flood, and then he loosens his grip enough to let me turn and lean on him. He's always let me lean on him, and I have never deserved that grace. I don't deserve it now. His presence is the only thing that's real in this mist, fog, pain, ice.
"I've lost my kids," I gasp out between sobs. "Oh God, my kids." The pain is in my heart, in the empty space of my womb where they grew, and it's so primal that I don't know how to live through it.
"No, you haven't," he tells me, and I feel the scrape of his beard stubble as he presses his cheek against mine. "You haven't lost anybody. But do you really want their mom killed by their dad? Do you think that saves them? I know what it feels like to be the survivor, and it turned me inside out. Don't do that to them." I feel him swallow. "Don't do it to me."
We stand there in the cold, buffeted by traffic and smothered by mist, for a very long time, and then I say, "I'll try." I mean, I'll try to live.
I almost believe it.
Just because Sam doesn't want me to fling myself into traffic, or give myself up to Melvin, doesn't mean our friendship is healed. I don't know if there is anything between us anymore. The bridges we'd built, out of time and care and kindness . . . those are ruins, and the rapids run deep.
We drive for about an hour, and the silence hangs heavy, until Sam says, "We need gas. Food wouldn't hurt, either."
I can't imagine eating, but I nod. I don't want to argue. I'm afraid the slightest disagreement will send us both tumbling down the river, out of control.
He pulls off at a truck stop, one of the big chain affairs that accommodates dozens of cars and features extravagant convenience-store selections, plus a sit-down restaurant and showers for tired long-haulers. We take a booth in the diner and eat chicken-fried steak and mashed potatoes, and the food revives me a little.
"Are you going back to Stillhouse Lake?" I finally ask him. "Or . . . home?" I don't know where his home is, I realize. We've never really talked about where he's from.
"I haven't decided," he says. "I'm thinking about it." I get a glance that's so fast I barely register it as a look. "If you didn't do what those tapes show you did--"
"I didn't." Somehow, I manage to say it quietly. I want to shout it. To smash my fists into the table until they bleed.
"If you didn't," he repeats, without any emphasis at all, "then I can't let you put yourself in danger without someone to watch your back."
I'm biting the inside of my cheek, I realize, to keep myself from doing something stupid. I taste copper and realize I've drawn blood. I have a mad, stupid urge to tell him that I did do those things, and to just fuck off and let me go, because I know right now that it would be the kinder thing to do. This is tearing him apart. I can tell from the careful way he moves, as if he has to think out everything he does, no matter how normal. We seduced each other into the idea that we could overcome all this, and now . . . now we can't.
"Someone you can recommend?" I ask him.
Sam puts his fork down and leans back against the worn vinyl of the seat. For the first time, he looks me square in the eyes, and I can't read him at all. All control, nothing on the surface. "Lots of people," he says. "But nobody I'd trust you not to screw over."
"Sam--"
"Don't." It's a soft, sharp cut, and I see the flicker in his eyes to go with it. Violence, suppressed. "If you're lying to me, swear to God, I will walk away and leave you to die, because you will deserve what you get. Do you understand me?"
I should tell him to just drive away, right now. I know I should. Sam is a good man wh
o's had a hard road to this point. But I can either be honest and cruel, or I can be kind and a liar.
He wouldn't thank me for being kind. And the truth is, I need him.
"I won't lie to you," I say. I mean it. "I never helped him. I never will. I want him dead. And you can help me get there."
He doesn't blink. Doesn't move. I can see that he's waiting to see any sign in me of deception, or weakness.
Then he nods, spears a bite of steak, and says, "Then that's the deal. We find him. We kill him. And we're done."
My scarf, I realize, has slipped down and exposed the darkened bruises around my neck, and as the waitress stops to refill our water glasses, I see her giving me a worried look. I readjust the fabric, say nothing, keep eating. When she brings the check, she turns it over in front of me. Handwritten on the back is, Is that man hurting you?
The irony is so thick I want to laugh. I shake my head and pay the bill in cash, and she moves on, still frowning.
I don't tell Sam she thought he was abusive. It's the darkest possible joke, because I'm the one hurting him.
By that time, Sam's staring out the window. It's fogged over, but when I wipe a spot clear, I realize that the sleet is coming down thick. It's already started to coat the cold surface of the sidewalk; the freeways won't be much better.
"We won't get far in this," I tell him.
He nods. "There's a motel next door."
We drive the SUV over to the parking lot. This chain isn't as anonymous as the French Inn, and I have to use a prepaid card as a guarantee, even though we're paying cash.
"One room?" the clerk asks, and it isn't really a question until Sam says, "Two." That earns us both a curious look, and she books us in that way. It's twice the expense, but I understand. Space is better now.
In the silence of the anonymous room, I sit on the bed and stare at nothing, and I wonder when this emptiness will start to fill. All my panic and pain is gone now, but all that's left is . . . nothing. Nothing but a desire to find Melvin.
My room shares a connecting door with Sam's. I take off my shoes and wrap up in the covers, and I'm still staring at that silent closed door when sleep drags me away.
